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Posted on • Originally published at prateeksha.com

How Much Shopify Actually Takes From Each Sale (Fees Explained for Developers and Founders)

Shopify fees can quietly shave margin off every order, and if you’re building a business or a commerce-focused product, knowing the exact math matters. This guide breaks down what Shopify charges per sale, how those fees interact with other payment processors, and practical implementation tips so engineers and founders can design for accurate pricing and reporting.

Quick context: two fee types you need to know

Shopify mostly charges two kinds of fees on sales:

  • Payment processing fees: charged when a payment is accepted (this is the card or gateway cost).
  • Transaction fees: an additional Shopify fee only charged if you use a third‑party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments.

If you use Shopify Payments there’s no Shopify transaction fee — only the payment processing percentage + fixed cent amount applies. If you use PayPal, Stripe, or another gateway, expect both the gateway’s fee and Shopify’s transaction fee.

Concrete rates by plan (U.S. online rates, typical)

For quick reference, the usual online card rates when using Shopify Payments are:

  • Basic Shopify: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
  • Shopify: 2.6% + $0.30 per transaction
  • Advanced Shopify: 2.4% + $0.30 per transaction

If you use a third-party gateway, Shopify adds:

  • Basic Shopify: +2.0% transaction fee
  • Shopify: +1.0% transaction fee
  • Advanced Shopify: +0.5% transaction fee

Note: In-person POS rates are lower and vary by plan. Also expect extra charges for international cards or currency conversion. Always double-check the official pricing for your region.

Simple formulas and a pair of examples

Use these formulas to compute fee per sale:

  • Using Shopify Payments: Fee = (percentage_rate × sale_amount) + fixed_fee
  • Using third-party gateway: Fee = Shopify_transaction_fee% × sale_amount + gateway_fee

Example 1 — $100 sale on Basic using Shopify Payments:

  • 2.9% of $100 = $2.90
  • + $0.30 fixed = $3.20 total fee
  • Net = $96.80

Example 2 — $100 sale on Basic using PayPal (assume PayPal is 2.9% + $0.30):

  • Shopify transaction fee = 2% of $100 = $2.00
  • PayPal fee = $3.20
  • Total = $5.20
  • Net = $94.80

These examples are intentionally simple — real-world fees can include currency conversion, cross-border surcharges, chargeback fees, and app or subscription costs.

Practical steps for developers and founders

  1. Identify which Shopify plan you’re on and whether Shopify Payments is available in your country.
  2. Add the fee formulas into your checkout, accounting, and analytics pipelines.
  3. Track both gross and net revenue with webhooks (order.created, payments) so accounting reflects real profit.

Implementation tips:

  • Compute expected fees server-side where trust and accuracy matter, but show a simplified estimate client-side for UX.
  • Use Shopify webhooks to reconcile actual payouts with expected fees. Track payout reports to capture card chargebacks and refunds.
  • Localize price displays when you accept multiple currencies — show the currency conversion and potential conversion fee disclaimers.
  • Store the payment method used per order (Shopify Payments vs PayPal) so automated reports can apply the correct fee model.

Ways to reduce fees (tradeoffs to consider)

Reducing fees often comes down to tradeoffs between flexibility and cost:

  • Use Shopify Payments if it’s available in your country to eliminate Shopify’s transaction fee.
  • Upgrade to a higher plan if your volume justifies the lower percentage rates.
  • For very large merchants, Shopify Plus gives negotiated rates — consider it if your checkout volume is high.
  • Be careful switching to cheapest gateway: some gateways have better international rates or payout timing which could offset Shopify’s transaction fee savings.

Quick checklist:

  • Compare effective blended fee (Shopify + gateway) for your top 5 markets.
  • Model pricing changes (raise price vs absorb fee) and A/B test impact on conversion.
  • Monitor chargebacks and disputes — those have discrete fees that aren’t covered above.

Why this matters for product teams

  • Pricing logic: If you build plugins, apps, or internal tools that show margins, inaccurate fee handling leads to wrong business decisions.
  • UX: Displaying “You’ll be charged $X (incl. fees)” improves trust and reduces checkout abandonment.
  • Reporting: Knowing net revenue per order lets growth teams compute true CAC, LTV, and ROAS.

For a deeper walkthrough with real examples and a downloadable calculator, check out my writeup at https://prateeksha.com/blog/shopify-fees-per-sale. If you want more commerce engineering notes and case studies, my site is https://prateeksha.com and I post regularly at https://prateeksha.com/blog.

Final takeaway

Shopify’s fee structure is straightforward once you map it to your plan and gateway choices: payment processor fees always apply, Shopify transaction fees only apply if you don’t use Shopify Payments. Build fee-aware pricing, wire your reporting to capture net payouts, and treat cross-border and third-party gateway fees as first-class items in your financial model. Do that, and your pricing and growth decisions will be grounded in reality.

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